I recently made a video on modding my Synology DS918+ to 5GbE and it works great using a QNAP 5GbE USB adapter for $79 but when I eventually outgrow my current NAS I'll probably go with a higher end QNAP, but for now 5GbE is fast enough for me video editing and storage needs.
I don’t even have a computer 😢. But it’s still great 👍 to watch. So when I’m ready to buy. I will know what to buy 😊. Education in Tech is always great 👍.
As a Synology owner, let me suggest a slightly different workflow that might work better for some people. Synology (don't know about Qnap) has a program called "Drive". This lets you sync directories from your local computer to the Synology box as quickly as you write them. This way you edit on your local machine on super fast NVME disks and your project is instantly synced the moment you write anything to disk. You then backup that NAS dir to the cloud or whereever. You can sync between other computers too. On windows, it gets better because there is a feature called On Demand sync which will, as the disk gets fuller, unload files that haven't been used in a long time (you can pin directories to never be unloaded) so you see their filenames, but they don't take up space on the disk. If you need them, they are transparently copied from the NAS back to your drive. This means on a small local super fast NVME disk you can have access to as much larger amount of content on your NAS without you having to manage everything. This means in the vast majority of cases a 1 gig link and cheap platter drives are just fine and you get all the benefits of local NVME editing.
Appreciate this comment, as it might be exactly what I'm looking for. I've got nVME internal, and I'm considering a 6-bay, with two, 3-drive volumes (one as mass storage with SHR1, the other as a backup for my actual computer and the other volume, also SHR1) Would that be a workable use case? Or is there a better way altogether?
@@JustinDoesTriathlon I have a 6 drive Synology (1618+) and made one 6 drive RAID6 Storage Pool. On top of that, I made two logical volumes. This accomplishes the same thing as what you want to do, but imho is much more flexible and gives 2 drive redundancy to all data. You also don't need to allocate all data into the volumes and can grow each independently based on your needs. If you eventually swap in new, bigger drives you can also add space as you see fit and grow each volume as needed. The only downside I can think of is each time you swap in a new drive you have to rebuild the entire storage pool, but that's a small penalty for the flexibility and RAID6 redundancy.
@@machinethinking Wow, that's really fantastic, thanks for your help. I feel decently knowledgeable about building computers, but nas/server volumes are very new to me. Appreciate the input (and your videos, coincidentally! Have watched them all in the past) I'll give that a strong look over, seems like it could be great.
Hi. Thank you for sharing. This sounds really interesting and like something that can save me some bucks as I have a team of 5 and each PC has fast nvme drives to work off and then archive on slower HDDs. Can you please point me to a resource where I can find out how to set this up and how it works in more depth? Thank you!
Max would you recommend a thunderbay 4 with thunderbolt 3 for fast read and write speeds over synology? I don’t want to spend OVER $800; this is without any hard drives.
How do you compare to Synology's new 1618xs+? It seems like they had an answer to these issues and it's the same price with upgraded CPU, RAM and built in 10GB / NVME cache. I only ask because I need to upgrade my Synology solution and I'm used to their amazing UI.
Thanks for putting another review with clear description of use case, acceptance criteria, expertise limits, etc. I personally was not considering all SSDs in my next RAID box; but, you got me wondering about TRIM support and accurate SSD status. SSDs rarely die; but, when they do, it can get really ugly. Storage is where I tend to setup and forget. Then a lot of years go by and suddenly realize I got end of life issues on my oldest components. I think I would put a sticker on my all SSD RAID box saying "Replace drives around 7/15/2024 (+4 years from use)" as a reminder.
I built my own custom server for a few reasons. Redundancy on EVERYTHING, infinitely expandable, and its faster and cheaper than most off the shelf options. Its a complicated experience, for those without a networking background, but still possible.
I personally build a UnRaid setup and it has been awesome. Even using old tech the system is faster and easier to add things like 10gbe, ssd caching etc. Of course it'll cost more if you're looking to save space but since I was putting this into my storage room in my basement I didn't mind. I love the Qnap but $1500 for just an enclosure is wild.
I like your philosophy of only keeping the finished videos. Archival storage is such a beast and it's only getting worse with higher resolutions and multiple cameras. I have to convince myself to jettison the old footage once the final result is achieved.
Something I read on the internet: SSD RAID makes more sense if you're using similar spec drives of different models from different manufacturers. If you buy a bunch of drives from the same manufacturer and retailer, they're quite likely to die around the same time, unlike a HDD, which has a much more random lifespan.
Synology DS1618+ is by far the best solution I've used. My suggestion is that if you edit heavy footage from the NAS max out the NAS RAM and if you can add a NVMe then max that out too in order to have the fastest buffer. Now I'm planning to get a larger NAS to handle Plex from a different box just to keep things separate. Also way more apps within the Synology ecosystem.
Thank you for the video. I am definitely interested in a custom solution. Now that I have completed my storage cleanup, I am interested in upgrading my current setup and would be interested in seeing how a custom setup compares to the Synology and QNAP. Great job once again.
Hey Gerald, I exhanged the stock fans in my Synology to Noctua fans. Very easy mod to do, and it runs much quieter (and probably cooler, although unconfirmed) now.
@@StreetsOfVancouverChannel What is funny, man? I was being serious. Full Spectrum allows you to see two extra wavelengths that the human eye cannot see... infrared and UV. Cameras block these frequencies by default with the hot mirror filter.
I've been using (rather deploying) QNAPs in various studios. Ranging from small 5-bay models up to a few 16-bay models. I can say I am really satisfied with them! One of the nice things - you can put double the amount of 2.5" drives into them! This means if you have a 6-bay model you can put 12 drives into them. QNAP provides a special "craddle" for the 3.5" bay that has some form of raid. This means you can make your QNAP a RAID0 because the craddle is basically a RAID1.
@@levraichris3321 Haha, somehow I still am! One of them is QNAP QDA-A2AR, maybe they have other models as well, but this one I know of that definitely works :)
Gerald, your reviews are incredible. Thank you for putting this together. As always your thoroughness is astounding. Hands down, the best channel on RUclips.
@@jamesj4998 You wouldn't say that if you knew what was planned... although, we aren't evolving at the moment we are de-volving due to the majority of the population not having a positive mind-pattern.
I would substitute all third parties with "dirty danglers." Friends, family, children, postal workers, best buy employees, babysitters, let your imagination soar...
Gerald - I wonder if the thing to do would be to go back to the 672, swap the dual Thunderbolt for the 10 Gb/s Ethernet. Then an interesting experiment would be to add (2) NVMe drives in a RAID 1 as the front-end cache to the storage. That might allow you to saturate the network since the NVMe's would be faster than SATA SSD's and the RAID 1 algorithm is even simpler than the RAID 10. Just some thoughts. Thanks for the video!
Loved this review!!! QNAP also makes add in cards to add both 10gbe and M.2 cache drives on the same card. So you could probably swap out the dual thunderbolt for a dual M.2. Also on a side note these cards can be used in a PC as an Add in card. So 10gbe & an M.2 on the same card.
Thank you so much for this video. Because of these videos, I was able to buy a Synology NAS (my first ever NAS) 920+. I am in the initial phase of my YouTubing career and 920+ has been incredible, especially DSM 7. With Synology Photos, I could organize with photos like Google Photos. I am using my NAS with MBP M1 Pro 2021 and the experience has been mind-blowing. with 7GBPS speeds in the new Mac, it has been a hell of an experince.
Right time,through video,nice segmented video titles.Was thinking to purchase a NAS system,watched a bunch of distracted videos,but you nailed it Gerald. Salute from London,ON.
I set this up at the beginning of the year. DS1618, three 6TB spinners (for now), maxed out the ram, put in an SFP+ PCIe card (Mellanox connect-x2 in the NAS and the 2 computers) , and ran fiber to the PCs. Edit 6k video off it without issue in Davinci Resolve. Using a ramdisk on the DS1618, got 1.08GB/sec file transfer. I didn't go with the QNAP because I read about the security / malware issues they've had scared me away.
Looking into getting myself a NAS. This is very helpful. Actually the most helpful I've watched! Why have I not stumbled upon your channel before? No idea. But I've already subscribed! Thanks for this 👌
I've been using the Synology Diskstation for 5 years now and have accumulated 5 of them across 3 sites for redundancy and sheer lunacy. In fact I've had the 1618+ for year plus now and am really happy with it. I picked up a QNAP TS-251+ today and was pleasantly surprised to see your video comparing the two companies offerings. My reason for buying the TS-251+ is to offload some operations off my 1618+ so that I can get back to editing off of it. I may make a video explaining all of that but it will probably be 3 hours long and not as entertaining as I hope. Will probably be some high level nerd stuff. Thanks for your video.
Great video Gerald. I’ve been a QNAP user for 10+ years now. They have got better and better for multipurpose video editing. Tech support is also fantastic. Now I have 6 of the buggers. Haha. Keep up the good work. Pete.
Thanks for doing your videos in my own bespoke order. I literally bought a Synology RS2418 and a QNAP TS-1635 in the last 2 days! The QNAP is replacing the LOUD Synology (which is a rack unit, granted). Would be easier if you made the videos right *before* instead of right after my purchases though :-) The good news is I can play back a clip in Final Cut with four 4K camera angles and the angle viewer AND the main clip visible and it just rocks along at 10G.
Solid video. This is why I just keep 50TB in my system rather than using a NAS. I get all the speed I need, it's accessible to other computers, and I can still have external & cloud backups for a fraction of the total cost.
"I'm not really interested in storing all that nerd talk perpetually" haha. As always, even a few years later, excellent content from Gerald Undone. Thanks for all that you do. TJ
How cone after so many years on YT Just now I found the best reviewer!? 🤷♂️ Last week I picked up a new DS920+ and I love it despite still having 1gb port.
Hey. Amazing video! This is kind of exactly what I was planning to build for editing from 2 or 3 PCs. Awesome to see a great video about it. What about using regular HDs in the NAS, though? Too slow? Does anybody know if regular HDs and 1GBit network would be enough to edit from (mainly 1080p footage/video though)?
This was incredibly dense and concise. I watched it the whole way through and all information was pertinent but clearly explained. Excellent video. Thank you for this.
Wow...I made it to the four minute mark before getting a bit glassy eyed. That is not bad for a landlord. Great video! tHanks for all the info. I have a super Triple Drive backup system - but this is next level stuff!
Awesome video, Gerald! I would love to see a video of a regular day of filming and editing workflow, as well as the time it takes you. Thank you for the knowledge here my friend!
I started with Synology diskstations but this year I upgraded to a RS1619xs+ with four 4TB Samsung Evos in RAID F1 and then a RS2818RP+ with over 100tb for bulk storage. You definitely would have to keep these in a server closet with sound dampening and ventilation but this setup is rock solid if you prefer performance and reliability over noise levels (about 60 dba eek). NVME caching on the 1619xs+ actually had a performance penalty but it’s plenty fast enough without it. For the Synology disk stations you can swap the 40mm fans for quieter noctua fans.
I would like to see how a custom build that achieves your goals and compares to these NAS boxes. I have recently been considering building a NAS so I'm glad to see these videos. Thanks Gerald.
As an infrequent amateur my needs aren't intense, but I have definitely found my Synology 918+ to be sufficiently fast for light timeline work in Resolve. Also, I just discovered Backblaze B2 and am over the moon! Great video. It was good to have my own experience confirmed
Missing out on a lot of good stuff on both those boxes by just using them as file storage, for that a custom setup will come in significantly cheaper and with significantly higher spec. I personally use the Synology kit and once you bump the RAM and start adding a few virtual machines, automated remote encrypted backups, surveillance station etc it really shines.
Get yourself a tiny little Noctua fan to replace the one on the 10Gb NIC. They even come with a low-noise adapter which will lower the maximum RPM of the fan and keep the noise down. The NF-A4x10 FLX is a tiny fan that should fit. If you don't want to cut and solder the 3 pin DC fan plug to that 2 pin VGA fan plug, get something like a Kolink fan adapter on Amazon and it's all plug and play! I would feel MUCH more comfortable knowing that there was active cooling on a component that was intended to have it!
We have a QNAP 1282 T3 and it's a vast improvement over an earlier unit - why? Processor i7 v. i3. The I7 make a huge difference. Boot times, transfers and so on. Quiet as well. We configured completely differently with two 2TB M.2 NVME drives and 4 12TB hard drives in raid 1 pairs. for backup. It's been flawless, but I know what you mean about interface. It's not very easy or intuitive. But how often do you need to look at it, not very.... Great video.
It's not every day you hear someone say that Synology is the cheaper solution. To be fair, this is like comparing a $750 camera from one vendor with a $1.5k camera from another. For the amount that QNAP costs you could get the Synology FileStation FS1018 with support for 12 SSD drives and expand with with a dual 10 GbE NIC. Anyway, I have a QNAP box, my brother uses Synology... both are good. The most important part is understanding your need and matching it to the correct hardware.
I don’t even have a computer 😢. But it’s still great 👍 to watch. So when I’m ready to buy. I will know what to buy 😊. Education in Tech is always great 👍.
Gerald, the performance of single threaded reads/writes will with few exceptions be the speed of the slowest drive. This is because a single threaded write isn't spread out to all of the drives, you would need multiple writes which could be distributed. This is why you always see the performance go up with threading/queuing. It's also the reason why you won't functionally notice a speed difference between all of the boxes you tested. The reason why your 10Gb ethernet was never saturated is because your slowest drive is constrained by it's 6Gb path over SATA. If you really want the ultimate in performance you will need a box that has extreme caching (it helps with read performance) and a very fast staging area to write synchronous writes to. Many that really understand storage like the freenas group will build a fairly powerful PC with lots of memory, spinning drives, and a very fast NVME drive that acts as a write cache using ZFS. The topology is this: The network always reads from the memory based cache first, then goes to disk. After a little bit, the cache gets enough data and makes this very fast. For writes, it will write to the NVME drive as well as the cache. Because the data was committed to NVME, it is stored safely and quickly, but we never bother to read it again unless we have a failure, instead we read from the cache. In other words, the NVME is only there to say we actually wrote the data to no volatile storage. There is so much more to explain so if you want more, shoot me an email at schu@schu.net, otherwise just know that you really aren't going to get more than 1 SSD drive's worth of performance out of any of the boxes you are looking at. If you want a great test to confirm that, put one of the SSD drives in your desktop and do all of the same tests again, you will notice, it's not really any faster (maybe a little due to overhead). Matt
I should also note that storage is harder than it looks because much of it isn't obvious. The experts that understand the bottle necks can get amazing performance, but non-experts like Linus Tech Tips just keep swapping nas distros in order to find one that works the best and hopefully get lucky. I recommend reading through the ZFS articles at arstechnica by Jim Salter, he really does understand what's going on: arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/05/zfs-101-understanding-zfs-storage-and-performance/ Keep in mind that the article is from a ZFS perspective, but all raid systems will have similar issues to overcome.
I have a QNAP TS-932X with 10 GB SPF+ connection. I have 4 4 TB Iron Wolf drives set-up in a RAID-5 array, and 2 256 MB SSD drives set up as a read cache. I edit 5.9K directly off of the NAS.
I went with a QNAP unit. With any of those pre-fab storage solutions (QNAP or Synology), I would recommend ONLY using the drives that are fully compatible with the specific storage unit. I believe this is a more expensive route, but less headache in terms of troubleshooting & maintaining.
I'd never thought about just getting rid of all the non used files. My issue is I don't publish 99% of what I film so it's often not edited into something nice. Maybe I should spend more time doing that so I can delete the old stuff.
Hey Gerald, just to be on the safe side with the unplugged fan on the network card, maybe put a 40mm Noctua fan on top the heatsink? They're only like 20 bucks and SUPER quiet.
Storage is an expensive but interesting topic. I do try to save my video projects and it does add up fast... I recently picked up a QNAP TR-004 and filled it with 10TB drives. I'm happy with it so far for my use case. Using it in RAID 10 with the software configuration option instead of dip switches on the unit to select RAID level. I'm getting around 200mb/s writes which isn't great, but I'm using it for backup rather than trying to edit off of it. I might convert it to RAID 5 eventually to get more storage. At least until it makes sense to change out the drives. It sounds like you will benefit from a custom solution, but saturating a pair of 10 gbit ethernet ports would be a (fun) challenge to build a compact storage focused system around. I wonder if there are speed limitations related to the network gear rather than the NAS to consider as well.
@@MiaogisTeas 2.5 gigabytes a second over the two connections that do 10 gigabit. I haven't watched this video in 3 years so no idea what specific SSDs he was using but if they were SATA they will be limited to that interface and it's not 2.5 gigabytes/sec, more like a maximum of 500 MB/sec but with my older SATA SSDs it's a bit slower. You also don't get 1:1 transfer speeds in RAID situations.
Careful with those Aquantia cards. Everywhere Ive worked they tend to fail from load and heat when frequently in use. The Intel’s are ROCK solid. x550 cards. Well worth it.
Remember. A NAS system isn't really a "backup" solution. You still have to keep any data you want to keep long term as physical backups on HDD's and keep those offline.
Definitely would be fun to see what kind of crazy custom setup you could rig up. Check out all of the used enterprise server hardware on Ebay... Massive supply combined with very little demand. I bought an HP proliant rack server with dual 8 core xeons, 128gb ram, 8x2.5" drive bays, 3x dual sfp+ 20g cards, and redundant power supplies for $300! Overkill for storage? Sure, but I set it up to automatically transcode all of our offloaded camera footage to a better mezzanine codec as well as small, web-friendly versions that we often use. I'm sure you could think of some more creative ways to put cheap compute horsepower to good use!
Thank you for the insight. My current solution is to keep the files on my iPad (I edit on it) until finished editing, then upload to an external drive. Hdd may not be optimal for editing, but I just use them for storage 😂 keep up the good work Gerald I enjoy your videos 💚💙💜
I think NAS can never compare with local file system due to the remote file system and local is different. What I do is install several 12TB mirrored drives (redundancy) with ZFS.
Please do a continuation to this video. I was in a similar situation with storage and simply upgraded to 13tb but a long term solution is needed for me.
Awesome review. Very professional and well delivered. And entertaining, too. You've given everyone enough info to know whether or not this tech will work for them and their use case.
You should be able to saturate that dual 10gbe connection with a RAID 0 cached NVME on the 6 bay QNAP. I'm guessing you went with straight SSD's for the reduced noise, otherwise, a RAID 0 two NVME solution will give you superior performance over a 6 SSD SATA RAID 0.
Also synology has an auto ingest mode. right when you plugin a USB / ESATA drive you can have it pull the data and place it chronologically in the synology system.
Gerald, a question/suggestion I have for a nerdy explanations video. Why do same focal length lenses measure different physical body lengths. This happens on both the same sensor size and more prominently when you switch sensor sizes. I have never found a good video that explains what happens to the light once it enters the lens until it gets to the sensor. One specific part in that is how a smaller aperture still results in the same image size on the sensor.
Who needs online course lol. just watch this man’s videos and you’re good to go! Your reviews are 🔥. Gerald, how do you make these videos without audio jump cuts? I rarely find any in your videos. You gotta be an ALIEN to pull stuff like that off 😂🤣
@@TheBecke1983 Considering I have my "old" rig all DDR3 AMD but i'm sure it's 4.7gig CPU and 3400K memory will do just find hosting Me a NAS, I just need the SSD's :)
You can build an Unraid box for a lot less and in return you get more power and control. Not a plug and play solution at first but most people watching this channel are surely into the techy stuff anyways. It is rock solid and much more flexible and cheaper than the solutions from QNAP and Synology.
@@VllKlNG That's true for the array, but you can do anything you want with the rest. For example you can still use ZFS with the plugin as an additional or replacement storage pool for super fast read / writes. I personally use a simple custom RAID0 setup for hosting the VMs and any other shares that need quick access and I use the main array for storing medias. Then I use multiple dockers to extend the functionalities like watching those videos using Jellyfin. So in the end you only need a single box, which uses standard PC components that can be cheap and easy to replace at any time, and you can build anything you want with it. The main downside is that if you go that route and don't just use the built-in array, then it's not a turn key solution anymore so you need to invest time into configuring everything as you like, but you do have the flexibility if you need it.
If you are going for a custom build with the ryzen platform. Then an asus or asrock motherboard will let you boot the computer without a graphics card installed. Freeing up 1 of the expansion slot. For 10gb I also recommend netgear XS505M switch. Finally an LSI sas card (the 9211 8i for pcie 2.0 x8 link. or the 9207-8i for pcie 3.0 x4). Will support +8 SATA 3 drives (and the pci-e uplink give full bandwidth for anything up to 7 of those 8 drives working simultaneously).
For us Mac users, the x872 is a no brainer option. The Thunderbolt-over-Ethernet speeds are blazing and very close to DAS, especially when you throw in a couple Nvme EVO drives as cache. That said, looking towards the future, I want and expect Ethernet to get to those Thunderbolt speeds natively, so I'd be interested in a solution that tests RAID 10 against not only 10Gbps, but even 40Gbps [QNAP has this exact NIC expansion card] ...
Not sure why Synology sent you the DiskStation; the FS1018 is designed for SSDs first and is significantly quieter since it doesn't have to deal with hard drive heat.
This level of nerddom is fantastic.
Benj Haisch Exactly. Most of what he said went over my head. Was still pleasing to watch, guy knows his stuff.
I recently made a video on modding my Synology DS918+ to 5GbE and it works great using a QNAP 5GbE USB adapter for $79 but when I eventually outgrow my current NAS I'll probably go with a higher end QNAP, but for now 5GbE is fast enough for me video editing and storage needs.
I don’t even have a computer 😢. But it’s still great 👍 to watch. So when I’m ready to buy. I will know what to buy 😊. Education in Tech is always great 👍.
As a Synology owner, let me suggest a slightly different workflow that might work better for some people. Synology (don't know about Qnap) has a program called "Drive". This lets you sync directories from your local computer to the Synology box as quickly as you write them. This way you edit on your local machine on super fast NVME disks and your project is instantly synced the moment you write anything to disk. You then backup that NAS dir to the cloud or whereever. You can sync between other computers too. On windows, it gets better because there is a feature called On Demand sync which will, as the disk gets fuller, unload files that haven't been used in a long time (you can pin directories to never be unloaded) so you see their filenames, but they don't take up space on the disk. If you need them, they are transparently copied from the NAS back to your drive. This means on a small local super fast NVME disk you can have access to as much larger amount of content on your NAS without you having to manage everything. This means in the vast majority of cases a 1 gig link and cheap platter drives are just fine and you get all the benefits of local NVME editing.
Appreciate this comment, as it might be exactly what I'm looking for. I've got nVME internal, and I'm considering a 6-bay, with two, 3-drive volumes (one as mass storage with SHR1, the other as a backup for my actual computer and the other volume, also SHR1) Would that be a workable use case? Or is there a better way altogether?
@@JustinDoesTriathlon I have a 6 drive Synology (1618+) and made one 6 drive RAID6 Storage Pool. On top of that, I made two logical volumes. This accomplishes the same thing as what you want to do, but imho is much more flexible and gives 2 drive redundancy to all data. You also don't need to allocate all data into the volumes and can grow each independently based on your needs. If you eventually swap in new, bigger drives you can also add space as you see fit and grow each volume as needed. The only downside I can think of is each time you swap in a new drive you have to rebuild the entire storage pool, but that's a small penalty for the flexibility and RAID6 redundancy.
@@machinethinking Wow, that's really fantastic, thanks for your help. I feel decently knowledgeable about building computers, but nas/server volumes are very new to me. Appreciate the input (and your videos, coincidentally! Have watched them all in the past) I'll give that a strong look over, seems like it could be great.
Hi. Thank you for sharing. This sounds really interesting and like something that can save me some bucks as I have a team of 5 and each PC has fast nvme drives to work off and then archive on slower HDDs.
Can you please point me to a resource where I can find out how to set this up and how it works in more depth?
Thank you!
Solid tip
Qnap crew 👏👌👍 . Thanks for making this vid! Always wanted to but never did so glad you made it instead and it’s fantastic!
A nerd bromance good to see.
Max would you recommend a thunderbay 4 with thunderbolt 3 for fast read and write speeds over synology? I don’t want to spend OVER $800; this is without any hard drives.
@@Sapientiaa If you don't need it to be connected to the web or multiple computers then yes.
Qnap all the way bros! 💪🏼
How do you compare to Synology's new 1618xs+? It seems like they had an answer to these issues and it's the same price with upgraded CPU, RAM and built in 10GB / NVME cache.
I only ask because I need to upgrade my Synology solution and I'm used to their amazing UI.
As an agency owner and video editor… I love what you’re talking about and wish I knew what you are saying 😂
Thanks for putting another review with clear description of use case, acceptance criteria, expertise limits, etc.
I personally was not considering all SSDs in my next RAID box; but, you got me wondering about TRIM support and accurate SSD status. SSDs rarely die; but, when they do, it can get really ugly. Storage is where I tend to setup and forget. Then a lot of years go by and suddenly realize I got end of life issues on my oldest components. I think I would put a sticker on my all SSD RAID box saying "Replace drives around 7/15/2024 (+4 years from use)" as a reminder.
"Give me about 15 minutes..." SO excited to hear that line again!😃😍
Wonder who was able to cut his hair as well as go hang gliding, within that 15 minute window? Aircuts 'R' us?
Would love to see you make a custom solution, especially after getting burned by NAS's custom power supplies that tend to fail.
Check yt for zfs raids. Tutorials allows total nobs to make it.
I built my own custom server for a few reasons. Redundancy on EVERYTHING, infinitely expandable, and its faster and cheaper than most off the shelf options. Its a complicated experience, for those without a networking background, but still possible.
@@joejamesphoto Any walkthroughs/tutorials you'd recommend on how to do this?
I personally build a UnRaid setup and it has been awesome. Even using old tech the system is faster and easier to add things like 10gbe, ssd caching etc. Of course it'll cost more if you're looking to save space but since I was putting this into my storage room in my basement I didn't mind.
I love the Qnap but $1500 for just an enclosure is wild.
I like your philosophy of only keeping the finished videos. Archival storage is such a beast and it's only getting worse with higher resolutions and multiple cameras. I have to convince myself to jettison the old footage once the final result is achieved.
Something I read on the internet: SSD RAID makes more sense if you're using similar spec drives of different models from different manufacturers. If you buy a bunch of drives from the same manufacturer and retailer, they're quite likely to die around the same time, unlike a HDD, which has a much more random lifespan.
Synology DS1618+ is by far the best solution I've used. My suggestion is that if you edit heavy footage from the NAS max out the NAS RAM and if you can add a NVMe then max that out too in order to have the fastest buffer. Now I'm planning to get a larger NAS to handle Plex from a different box just to keep things separate. Also way more apps within the Synology ecosystem.
I've been using an old Qnap for 5 yrs now and still receiving constant updates on them, definitely sticking with Qnap!
Thank you for the video. I am definitely interested in a custom solution. Now that I have completed my storage cleanup, I am interested in upgrading my current setup and would be interested in seeing how a custom setup compares to the Synology and QNAP. Great job once again.
Hey Gerald, I exhanged the stock fans in my Synology to Noctua fans. Very easy mod to do, and it runs much quieter (and probably cooler, although unconfirmed) now.
I have a Synology setup on my UniFi equipped network. I simply cannot give up that Synology UI. It’s just so good.
18:13 Yes please! That sounds interesting!
yes pls
How I enjoy, "give me about 15 min" great info Gerald.
"What's up everybody, I'm Gerald Undone and converting your camera to full spectrum is how you bust ghosts."
hhahahahahahaha!!!!
@@StreetsOfVancouverChannel What is funny, man? I was being serious. Full Spectrum allows you to see two extra wavelengths that the human eye cannot see... infrared and UV. Cameras block these frequencies by default with the hot mirror filter.
Right in time when I'm thinking to finally throw in a NAS! 👍 As usual, huuuge thumbs up for the job done!
I've been using (rather deploying) QNAPs in various studios. Ranging from small 5-bay models up to a few 16-bay models.
I can say I am really satisfied with them!
One of the nice things - you can put double the amount of 2.5" drives into them! This means if you have a 6-bay model you can put 12 drives into them.
QNAP provides a special "craddle" for the 3.5" bay that has some form of raid. This means you can make your QNAP a RAID0 because the craddle is basically a RAID1.
Hey ! if you are still alive 3years later, can you point me out that accessory ? I can't find them ! Thanks !
@@levraichris3321 Haha, somehow I still am! One of them is QNAP QDA-A2AR, maybe they have other models as well, but this one I know of that definitely works :)
Gerald, your reviews are incredible. Thank you for putting this together. As always your thoroughness is astounding. Hands down, the best channel on RUclips.
Gerald: I don't keep files forever...
Here I am staring at my 7TB HDDs full of unedited files
I feel you. 8TB NAS and another 14TB in archive drives.
i think i have +2000 old movie rips that come in a 700mb taking a big chunk of my server and i just can't let'em go
I’m Gerald Undone: and 2019 tried to warn us, but we didn’t listen
2020 is warning you for what is coming. It will get worse and worse up until probably 2033... then we either evolve or become complete slaves.
@@jamesj4998 You wouldn't say that if you knew what was planned... although, we aren't evolving at the moment we are de-volving due to the majority of the population not having a positive mind-pattern.
loved that "back to the future" style intro. Time dilation really makes a video pop. hahahaha
Even though I don't understand 3/4 of the technical details you talk about sometimes, you still make it interesting 😊👍🏻
The quality of this content is unparalleled in this field, well done!
I want to figure out how to say "dirty danglers" more often.
Just drop trau towards any full length mirror
Say that instead of your name.
I would substitute all third parties with "dirty danglers." Friends, family, children, postal workers, best buy employees, babysitters, let your imagination soar...
Watch a couple seasons of Letterkenny and you'll be top sniping Sallys with your dirty danglers in no time.
Good timing. I was just looking for this.
Gerald - I wonder if the thing to do would be to go back to the 672, swap the dual Thunderbolt for the 10 Gb/s Ethernet. Then an interesting experiment would be to add (2) NVMe drives in a RAID 1 as the front-end cache to the storage. That might allow you to saturate the network since the NVMe's would be faster than SATA SSD's and the RAID 1 algorithm is even simpler than the RAID 10. Just some thoughts. Thanks for the video!
Loved this review!!! QNAP also makes add in cards to add both 10gbe and M.2 cache drives on the same card. So you could probably swap out the dual thunderbolt for a dual M.2. Also on a side note these cards can be used in a PC as an Add in card. So 10gbe & an M.2 on the same card.
Did he just use “dirty danglers” and “orifice” in the same sentence 😂
I'm guessing he stores other videos on those boxes.
Thank you so much for this video. Because of these videos, I was able to buy a Synology NAS (my first ever NAS) 920+. I am in the initial phase of my YouTubing career and 920+ has been incredible, especially DSM 7. With Synology Photos, I could organize with photos like Google Photos. I am using my NAS with MBP M1 Pro 2021 and the experience has been mind-blowing. with 7GBPS speeds in the new Mac, it has been a hell of an experince.
Right time,through video,nice segmented video titles.Was thinking to purchase a NAS system,watched a bunch of distracted videos,but you nailed it Gerald. Salute from London,ON.
Freakin' freekishly fast and efficient breakdown of these devices. Nice job guy.
I set this up at the beginning of the year. DS1618, three 6TB spinners (for now), maxed out the ram, put in an SFP+ PCIe card (Mellanox connect-x2 in the NAS and the 2 computers) , and ran fiber to the PCs. Edit 6k video off it without issue in Davinci Resolve. Using a ramdisk on the DS1618, got 1.08GB/sec file transfer. I didn't go with the QNAP because I read about the security / malware issues they've had scared me away.
"Micromachines, just like the real thing, only smaller."🤣 Great review. Wow. not sure how I missed this one. I am still no better off in deciding. LOL
Looking into getting myself a NAS. This is very helpful. Actually the most helpful I've watched! Why have I not stumbled upon your channel before? No idea. But I've already subscribed! Thanks for this 👌
I'm Gerald Undone and I've finally finished this video! ;)
I've been using the Synology Diskstation for 5 years now and have accumulated 5 of them across 3 sites for redundancy and sheer lunacy. In fact I've had the 1618+ for year plus now and am really happy with it. I picked up a QNAP TS-251+ today and was pleasantly surprised to see your video comparing the two companies offerings. My reason for buying the TS-251+ is to offload some operations off my 1618+ so that I can get back to editing off of it. I may make a video explaining all of that but it will probably be 3 hours long and not as entertaining as I hope. Will probably be some high level nerd stuff. Thanks for your video.
Oh boy almost 150,000 subscribers congratulations well deserved now... let's get undone!!!
Great video Gerald. I’ve been a QNAP user for 10+ years now. They have got better and better for multipurpose video editing. Tech support is also fantastic. Now I have 6 of the buggers. Haha. Keep up the good work. Pete.
Thanks for doing your videos in my own bespoke order. I literally bought a Synology RS2418 and a QNAP TS-1635 in the last 2 days! The QNAP is replacing the LOUD Synology (which is a rack unit, granted). Would be easier if you made the videos right *before* instead of right after my purchases though :-)
The good news is I can play back a clip in Final Cut with four 4K camera angles and the angle viewer AND the main clip visible and it just rocks along at 10G.
Well done, sir! I've been looking at the QNAPs with envy, but I think I'll stick with my Synology for now.
Solid video. This is why I just keep 50TB in my system rather than using a NAS. I get all the speed I need, it's accessible to other computers, and I can still have external & cloud backups for a fraction of the total cost.
"I'm not really interested in storing all that nerd talk perpetually" haha. As always, even a few years later, excellent content from Gerald Undone. Thanks for all that you do. TJ
How cone after so many years on YT Just now I found the best reviewer!? 🤷♂️ Last week I picked up a new DS920+ and I love it despite still having 1gb port.
Hey. Amazing video! This is kind of exactly what I was planning to build for editing from 2 or 3 PCs. Awesome to see a great video about it. What about using regular HDs in the NAS, though? Too slow? Does anybody know if regular HDs and 1GBit network would be enough to edit from (mainly 1080p footage/video though)?
This was incredibly dense and concise. I watched it the whole way through and all information was pertinent but clearly explained. Excellent video. Thank you for this.
Wow...I made it to the four minute mark before getting a bit glassy eyed. That is not bad for a landlord.
Great video! tHanks for all the info. I have a super Triple Drive backup system - but this is next level stuff!
Sold on the QNAP 672XT. The level of thoroughness on this has my interest peaked as something to add as part of a setup for backing up.
You voice and breakdown made me subscribe. Your in-depth knowledge for a beginner made me hit the bell.
Awesome video, Gerald! I would love to see a video of a regular day of filming and editing workflow, as well as the time it takes you. Thank you for the knowledge here my friend!
GU, how are you this effortlessly smart? Seriously, how? My brain simultaneously hurts and feels better listening to your wisdom.
I started with Synology diskstations but this year I upgraded to a RS1619xs+ with four 4TB Samsung Evos in RAID F1 and then a RS2818RP+ with over 100tb for bulk storage. You definitely would have to keep these in a server closet with sound dampening and ventilation but this setup is rock solid if you prefer performance and reliability over noise levels (about 60 dba eek). NVME caching on the 1619xs+ actually had a performance penalty but it’s plenty fast enough without it. For the Synology disk stations you can swap the 40mm fans for quieter noctua fans.
I would like to see how a custom build that achieves your goals and compares to these NAS boxes. I have recently been considering building a NAS so I'm glad to see these videos. Thanks Gerald.
As an infrequent amateur my needs aren't intense, but I have definitely found my Synology 918+ to be sufficiently fast for light timeline work in Resolve.
Also, I just discovered Backblaze B2 and am over the moon!
Great video. It was good to have my own experience confirmed
Missing out on a lot of good stuff on both those boxes by just using them as file storage, for that a custom setup will come in significantly cheaper and with significantly higher spec. I personally use the Synology kit and once you bump the RAM and start adding a few virtual machines, automated remote encrypted backups, surveillance station etc it really shines.
Get yourself a tiny little Noctua fan to replace the one on the 10Gb NIC. They even come with a low-noise adapter which will lower the maximum RPM of the fan and keep the noise down. The NF-A4x10 FLX is a tiny fan that should fit.
If you don't want to cut and solder the 3 pin DC fan plug to that 2 pin VGA fan plug, get something like a Kolink fan adapter on Amazon and it's all plug and play!
I would feel MUCH more comfortable knowing that there was active cooling on a component that was intended to have it!
I've been waiting for this exact video and I'm so glad that YOU made it.
We have a QNAP 1282 T3 and it's a vast improvement over an earlier unit - why? Processor i7 v. i3. The I7 make a huge difference. Boot times, transfers and so on. Quiet as well. We configured completely differently with two 2TB M.2 NVME drives and 4 12TB hard drives in raid 1 pairs. for backup. It's been flawless, but I know what you mean about interface. It's not very easy or intuitive. But how often do you need to look at it, not very.... Great video.
thank you for this video, def the topic I've been searching for in a long time :)
QNAP has a feature that makes them the winner. Hybrid drives. QNAP can be a Thunderbolt 3 direct connected drive and a network drive at the same time.
It's not every day you hear someone say that Synology is the cheaper solution. To be fair, this is like comparing a $750 camera from one vendor with a $1.5k camera from another. For the amount that QNAP costs you could get the Synology FileStation FS1018 with support for 12 SSD drives and expand with with a dual 10 GbE NIC. Anyway, I have a QNAP box, my brother uses Synology... both are good. The most important part is understanding your need and matching it to the correct hardware.
Crystal Clear Explanation Build one at End Of The Year . Awesome
The definitive guide on NAS is here!
I don’t even have a computer 😢. But it’s still great 👍 to watch. So when I’m ready to buy. I will know what to buy 😊. Education in Tech is always great 👍.
Gerald, the performance of single threaded reads/writes will with few exceptions be the speed of the slowest drive. This is because a single threaded write isn't spread out to all of the drives, you would need multiple writes which could be distributed. This is why you always see the performance go up with threading/queuing. It's also the reason why you won't functionally notice a speed difference between all of the boxes you tested. The reason why your 10Gb ethernet was never saturated is because your slowest drive is constrained by it's 6Gb path over SATA. If you really want the ultimate in performance you will need a box that has extreme caching (it helps with read performance) and a very fast staging area to write synchronous writes to. Many that really understand storage like the freenas group will build a fairly powerful PC with lots of memory, spinning drives, and a very fast NVME drive that acts as a write cache using ZFS. The topology is this: The network always reads from the memory based cache first, then goes to disk. After a little bit, the cache gets enough data and makes this very fast. For writes, it will write to the NVME drive as well as the cache. Because the data was committed to NVME, it is stored safely and quickly, but we never bother to read it again unless we have a failure, instead we read from the cache. In other words, the NVME is only there to say we actually wrote the data to no volatile storage. There is so much more to explain so if you want more, shoot me an email at schu@schu.net, otherwise just know that you really aren't going to get more than 1 SSD drive's worth of performance out of any of the boxes you are looking at. If you want a great test to confirm that, put one of the SSD drives in your desktop and do all of the same tests again, you will notice, it's not really any faster (maybe a little due to overhead). Matt
I should also note that storage is harder than it looks because much of it isn't obvious. The experts that understand the bottle necks can get amazing performance, but non-experts like Linus Tech Tips just keep swapping nas distros in order to find one that works the best and hopefully get lucky. I recommend reading through the ZFS articles at arstechnica by Jim Salter, he really does understand what's going on: arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/05/zfs-101-understanding-zfs-storage-and-performance/ Keep in mind that the article is from a ZFS perspective, but all raid systems will have similar issues to overcome.
I have a QNAP TS-932X with 10 GB SPF+ connection. I have 4 4 TB Iron Wolf drives set-up in a RAID-5 array, and 2 256 MB SSD drives set up as a read cache. I edit 5.9K directly off of the NAS.
Gerald great review mate, i'm in the RAID zone right now so timing couldn't have been better.
I went with a QNAP unit. With any of those pre-fab storage solutions (QNAP or Synology), I would recommend ONLY using the drives that are fully compatible with the specific storage unit.
I believe this is a more expensive route, but less headache in terms of troubleshooting & maintaining.
wow what a great reviewer this guy is. so thorough. Great Job Gerald.
I'd never thought about just getting rid of all the non used files. My issue is I don't publish 99% of what I film so it's often not edited into something nice. Maybe I should spend more time doing that so I can delete the old stuff.
Hey Gerald, just to be on the safe side with the unplugged fan on the network card, maybe put a 40mm Noctua fan on top the heatsink? They're only like 20 bucks and SUPER quiet.
Storage is an expensive but interesting topic. I do try to save my video projects and it does add up fast... I recently picked up a QNAP TR-004 and filled it with 10TB drives. I'm happy with it so far for my use case. Using it in RAID 10 with the software configuration option instead of dip switches on the unit to select RAID level. I'm getting around 200mb/s writes which isn't great, but I'm using it for backup rather than trying to edit off of it. I might convert it to RAID 5 eventually to get more storage. At least until it makes sense to change out the drives. It sounds like you will benefit from a custom solution, but saturating a pair of 10 gbit ethernet ports would be a (fun) challenge to build a compact storage focused system around. I wonder if there are speed limitations related to the network gear rather than the NAS to consider as well.
He's using SSDs. Just two will saturate a single controller or 10gb port.
@@MiaogisTeas 2.5 gigabytes a second over the two connections that do 10 gigabit. I haven't watched this video in 3 years so no idea what specific SSDs he was using but if they were SATA they will be limited to that interface and it's not 2.5 gigabytes/sec, more like a maximum of 500 MB/sec but with my older SATA SSDs it's a bit slower. You also don't get 1:1 transfer speeds in RAID situations.
Careful with those Aquantia cards. Everywhere Ive worked they tend to fail from load and heat when frequently in use. The Intel’s are ROCK solid. x550 cards. Well worth it.
Remember. A NAS system isn't really a "backup" solution.
You still have to keep any data you want to keep long term as physical backups on HDD's and keep those offline.
Definitely would be fun to see what kind of crazy custom setup you could rig up. Check out all of the used enterprise server hardware on Ebay... Massive supply combined with very little demand. I bought an HP proliant rack server with dual 8 core xeons, 128gb ram, 8x2.5" drive bays, 3x dual sfp+ 20g cards, and redundant power supplies for $300! Overkill for storage? Sure, but I set it up to automatically transcode all of our offloaded camera footage to a better mezzanine codec as well as small, web-friendly versions that we often use.
I'm sure you could think of some more creative ways to put cheap compute horsepower to good use!
Thank you for the insight. My current solution is to keep the files on my iPad (I edit on it) until finished editing, then upload to an external drive. Hdd may not be optimal for editing, but I just use them for storage 😂 keep up the good work Gerald I enjoy your videos 💚💙💜
I think NAS can never compare with local file system due to the remote file system and local is different. What I do is install several 12TB mirrored drives (redundancy) with ZFS.
Please do a continuation to this video. I was in a similar situation with storage and simply upgraded to 13tb but a long term solution is needed for me.
Awesome review. Very professional and well delivered. And entertaining, too.
You've given everyone enough info to know whether or not this tech will work for them and their use case.
Perfect timing, I was searching on a storage solution for 4k videos and plex server.
Am I the only one who spent the majority of this video watching the reflection of Gerald's hands, from his monitor, in the glass of the QNAP?
Gerald’s videos are the only one in youtube that i have to slow down to watch
You should be able to saturate that dual 10gbe connection with a RAID 0 cached NVME on the 6 bay QNAP. I'm guessing you went with straight SSD's for the reduced noise, otherwise, a RAID 0 two NVME solution will give you superior performance over a 6 SSD SATA RAID 0.
Also synology has an auto ingest mode. right when you plugin a USB / ESATA drive you can have it pull the data and place it chronologically in the synology system.
"... and in today's episode Gerald Undone discusses computer orifice challenges... because HE'S CRAZZZZY!"
If it ain't broke then why fix it? Looks like either of these will work fine for someone needing 10Gbe. Good review and thank you.
Thank you ! Very good infos and reviews about NAS are so rare to find
Gerald, a question/suggestion I have for a nerdy explanations video. Why do same focal length lenses measure different physical body lengths. This happens on both the same sensor size and more prominently when you switch sensor sizes. I have never found a good video that explains what happens to the light once it enters the lens until it gets to the sensor. One specific part in that is how a smaller aperture still results in the same image size on the sensor.
Who needs online course lol. just watch this man’s videos and you’re good to go! Your reviews are 🔥.
Gerald, how do you make these videos without audio jump cuts? I rarely find any in your videos. You gotta be an ALIEN to pull stuff like that off 😂🤣
Love it, I have pulled fans before, I have even rewired two fans from parallel to serial so they run slower and quieter. Great review, thanks.
I've been looking to build my own NAS for my house. looking at the prices of all this def makes me want to do it DIY over paying that price. EAK!
yeah I made a bit of an overkill NAS for 500 dollar excluding drives u can prob make one for just 300
@@TheBecke1983 Considering I have my "old" rig all DDR3 AMD but i'm sure it's 4.7gig CPU and 3400K memory will do just find hosting Me a NAS, I just need the SSD's :)
@@TheKidsDaaaaad I was thinking the same thing.
The cost benefit of using an older custom build is enormous.
You can build an Unraid box for a lot less and in return you get more power and control.
Not a plug and play solution at first but most people watching this channel are surely into the techy stuff anyways. It is rock solid and much more flexible and cheaper than the solutions from QNAP and Synology.
I looked into this, but unraid is only a long term storage solution. Ideal for media servers. You will never get the speeds to edit video on the go.
You do not want an Unraid for anything less than as an archive/cold (or rather warm) storage.
@@VllKlNG That's true for the array, but you can do anything you want with the rest. For example you can still use ZFS with the plugin as an additional or replacement storage pool for super fast read / writes. I personally use a simple custom RAID0 setup for hosting the VMs and any other shares that need quick access and I use the main array for storing medias. Then I use multiple dockers to extend the functionalities like watching those videos using Jellyfin. So in the end you only need a single box, which uses standard PC components that can be cheap and easy to replace at any time, and you can build anything you want with it. The main downside is that if you go that route and don't just use the built-in array, then it's not a turn key solution anymore so you need to invest time into configuring everything as you like, but you do have the flexibility if you need it.
If you are going for a custom build with the ryzen platform. Then an asus or asrock motherboard will let you boot the computer without a graphics card installed. Freeing up 1 of the expansion slot. For 10gb I also recommend netgear XS505M switch. Finally an LSI sas card (the 9211 8i for pcie 2.0 x8 link. or the 9207-8i for pcie 3.0 x4). Will support +8 SATA 3 drives (and the pci-e uplink give full bandwidth for anything up to 7 of those 8 drives working simultaneously).
my 2tb MX500 failed in month... Good luck!
For us Mac users, the x872 is a no brainer option. The Thunderbolt-over-Ethernet speeds are blazing and very close to DAS, especially when you throw in a couple Nvme EVO drives as cache. That said, looking towards the future, I want and expect Ethernet to get to those Thunderbolt speeds natively, so I'd be interested in a solution that tests RAID 10 against not only 10Gbps, but even 40Gbps [QNAP has this exact NIC expansion card] ...
Great video! greets from Edmonton AB!
Almost went this route but have a setup now with a internal SAS card and windows storage spaces. 8x 2tb drives 12.7tb internal
NAS is great for video editing. He also spits some awesome rhymes.
Not sure why Synology sent you the DiskStation; the FS1018 is designed for SSDs first and is significantly quieter since it doesn't have to deal with hard drive heat.